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By Jenna FryerAssociated Press • Tuesday May 7, 2013 4:56 AM

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ryan Newman had to open his checkbook the last time he spoke out at Talladega.

Fed up about the style of racing, he said in 2010 that fans shouldn’t even bother coming to the track. He was punished with a fine that didn’t come to light for months, and the amount has never been publicly revealed.

But it’s precedent that could cost Newman following his strong rebuke of NASCAR on Sunday.

Newman had just witnessed Kurt Busch’s car barrel-roll on top of his. The closing laps of a Talladega race are frantic by nature, and on Sunday it was wet and cold and getting darker by the second when the 12-car accident erupted on the backstretch with six laps remaining.

Newman stepped in front of the television cameras and let it all out.

“They can build safer race cars, they can build safer walls, but they can’t get their heads out of their (expletive) far enough to keep them on the racetrack, and that’s pretty disappointing,” Newman said. “I wanted to make sure I get that point across. You all can figure out who they is.”

He went on to criticize NASCAR for restarting the race with 10 laps remaining despite the looming darkness. Rain had forced a 3-hour, 36-minute delay midway through the race, and Talladega doesn’t have lights.

“That’s no way to end a race. That’s just poor judgment in restarting the race, poor judgment,” Newman said. “You got what you wanted, but poor judgment and running in the dark and running in the rain. That’s it, thank you.”

Logic would say that those comments are going to cost Newman some cold, hard cash this week. But logic doesn’t apply anymore, because NASCAR’s decisions seem to change on a daily basis.

Remember, it was just two months ago that Denny Hamlin was slapped with a $25,000 fine for the fairly mild assessment that NASCAR’s new car at Phoenix “did not race as good as our generation five cars. This is more like what the generation five was at the beginning.”

Roughly six weeks later, defending champion Brad Keselowski escaped punishment for essentially accusing NASCAR of unfairly targeting his team after inspectors confiscated parts from both Penske Racing cars before the Texas race.

NASCAR chairman Brian France has attempted to put boundaries on what drivers can and can’t say, and the new car and the quality of racing are out of bounds.

“I have been crystal clear in the meetings with all of the drivers and all of the owners about the fact that we are going to give them more opportunities to criticize more things than any other professional sport in America,” France said after Hamlin’s fine. “Having said that, there is one line that we are not going to tolerate, and that’s going to be criticizing the quality of the racing product in any way, form or fashion.”

“No other professional sport lets you have at it, criticize anything. … We allow that, and only want them to be careful on one topic.” Everything Newman said is technically allowable under France’s guidelines, and after all the incidents Newman has experienced at restrictor plate tracks, his comments might even be justifiable.

But he had a message he wanted to deliver in front of a television audience.